Back from sickness and vacation

The past two weeks didn't go as planned. If you're following this journal, you'll notice that I haven't made any entires or commits for two weeks. This was mostly because I was still(!) feeling sick. Finally I was diagnosed with strep throat, and am feeling a lot better today. Tomorrow is my last dose of antibiotics so hopefully I'll get back to running tomorrow or the day after.

Note: [the entry prior to this one](8274ccb) is fairly defeated in tone. This is because (1) I was unexpectedly starting to feel sick (again) and didn't want to believe it, and (2) I was trying to get too much done in the time allotted. A recipe for defeatedness. I'm feeling much better about things now. Plenty of things to do but one step at a time. Plenty of time to address them all. Most important ones first.

Despite what it says in my plan at the moment, my next step will not be creating a Patreon. This is because (1) the value accrued from having a Patreon up before creating my content probably isn't that high (look at how Vi Hart raised $6k in just a few days on her reputation), (2) it takes a while to get a strong following on a Patreon so the money wouldn't mean much, (3) it's a distraction from focusing on the work the will actually help move me forward at this juncture (planning, reading, writing).

I'm very excited about a potential upcomming collaboration with Nicky Case. On our phone call a few weeks back, I asked him for advice on writing essays and he outline his thoughts in what will hopefully be an essay he and I collab on. That sounds like a lot of fun! It would be great to have a small win under my belt. Despite it likely not being the absolute highest priority right now, it's in the right direction. In other words, even though my Work Plan isn't quite done, I still have a pretty strong feeling that this small detour would move me closer to accomplishing it. As I told Nicky, I have ~20 hours this week to work on the essay. But really there's no rush. I can work on other things this week and come back to that next week.

Another thing on my mind is the unbreakable-links project. This project has taken much longer than expected. Just another opportunity for me to improve my currently highly inaccurate planning skills. The short-term solution is quite reasonable: whenever I want to move or delete a file in this directory, I simply have to think through what will happen to all prior links to that page. I do this well with the now deprecated /journal page.

Ok, so now let me think about my priorities:

* Write 3 different outlines for the "essay about essays" to send to Nicky Case
* Publish the now-very-late podcast with Emmanuel from bubble
* Spend time writing about my goals for this project
* Deep dive on Bret, read the Zine, send him an email
* Write 3 outlines about learning/teaching to code (and learning in general)
* Continue writing FoC plan
* Schedule meetings with key people (Aidan, Stefan, Samuel)
* Migrate other blogs from Trello (including AT essay outline)
* Reach out to guest or two for next week on the podcast

Ok, these are all top priorities that need to happen in the next week or so. The order I do them in doesn't matter much. Let's go ahead and put them on my calendar in blocks, so I can visualize what I can get done and move them around as needed.

This is what it looks like now:

![screenshot 2017-11-28 at 10 52 36 am](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2288939/33329341-51f477f0-d42a-11e7-9091-4d6d3a72a3ff.png)

I'm feeling happy and aligned with this. I am now noticing that this would be in contradiction with what I told Casey, that I have ~20 hours for this project. Depending on how our conversation goes, I can always bump one of these blocks to next week no problem and manufacture 20 hours here. However this is the plan if he doesn't want to work on this this week.

You may have noticed that I'm more structured today than usual. This is (1) because I have not been regular about my entries the past few weeks and am feeling a bit adrift, and (2) I fell into a Jordan Peterson YouTube hole last night and he says some pretty straightforward things about happiness, including that you need structure. The first question he asks someone who's depressed is, "do you have a job?" If the answer is no, then his answer is get one, even if it's not perfect. It will set you up for success. So while I don't want to follow the letter of his advice, I do want to add a little more structure to my life to stave off any kind of emotional turmoil from working alone and jobless.

plan.md

@@ -173,7 +173,7 @@ I imagine this library would be quite similar to Blockly, which enabled me to bu
 
 In summary, here's my tentative plan:
 
-1. Launch a Patreon. This will happen in the next week or three (because I'm taking off next week for Thanksgiving).
+~~1. Launch a Patreon. This will happen in the next week or three (because I'm taking off next week for Thanksgiving).~~ *Will punt on this for now.*
 
 2. Write. Mostly about teaching and learning to code. 4-8 weeks, so Dec and Jan.
 

unbreakable-links/index.js

@@ -103,6 +103,8 @@ const filePathFromRepoPath = repoPath => {
 }
 
 window.addEventListener("load", () => {
+  return // disable the entire library for now
+
   // do nothing if this library is being loaded inside itself
   if (window.frameElement && window.frameElement.classList.contains('unbreakable-links')) { return }